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Veterans Bare Their Souls in Literary Events

Veterans live in the world in between. Never fully civilians culturally, no longer service members by profession, we do our best to find a balance, to create comfortable zones.

Literary readings where veterans and civilians can engage in honest exchanges constitute just such a place. Free from political undertones or ulterior motives, they allow veterans to tell their tales, to speak their truths. Just as important, they provide the rest of society a glimpse into what it means to have served in the military.

Brandon Caro, who served as a Navy Corpsman, told of coming to view enemy combatants as a medical threat not so different from germs. Teresa Fazio, who was a Marine Corps officer, read an excerpt from her memoir describing a thorny romantic relationship begun in a mortuary in a military camp in Iraq. Nicole Goodwin, an Army veteran, read a lyrical piece on what a drill competition taught her about striving for perfection and learning to trust, obey and believe. Her second reading was a poem to her daughter, whom she had to leave as a newborn for a lengthy deployment.

Derek Meitzer read an often-humorous account of his time as a Marine combat photographer during a deployment marked by an abundance of down time. Finally, Jeremy Warneke, who served fourteen months in Iraq with the Army National Guard, read a piece titled, “Admonishments and Anecdotes for Past, Present and Prospective Members of the United States Armed Forces.”

Being a veteran myself, the first feeling I had listening to the readers was one of recognition: I know them; I am them; they are me. I know the jargon, I understand the nuances, I remember the depth of the desert sand, the sound of incoming rounds, the way marching in cadence could take over even your heartbeat. Did the rest of the audience even catch the irony in Derek’s self-deprecating description of his reaction to his camp being mortared?

Sometimes I felt like I could have written the words myself: “I don’t wish for bad things to happen, but if they do, I want to be there” — Derek again, concisely explaining the paradox that is at the heart of so many veterans’ service: we make war that we may live in peace, as Aristotle wrote.

I recognized a bit of myself in each of the readers: our pride, our training, our love of fellow Marines, our internal conflicts regarding experiences and choices, and yes, our sour grapes at a system that at times failed to live up to the standards it demanded of us. I found myself shifting to military me, and it was not all pleasant: I caught myself measuring, judging and dismissing complaints as indicators of personal failings. The indoctrination we received in boot camp, and throughout our military careers, is not as easily discarded as our faded uniforms when we re-enter the “real world.” Pain is not weakness leaving the body, I reminded myself. People are not selfish for prioritizing family over career. It’s normal to feel afraid when you’re in a war zone.

Again and again, the writers sought to answer all-too-familiar questions: What does my military service mean to me? How do I make sense of my participation in war? Teresa recounted a moment of recognition of shared femininity with an Iraqi woman as their eyes locked; Brandon explained killing as a process of dehumanizing the enemy, reducing him to a disease to be eradicated; Jeremy tried to reconcile bitterness about unfair treatment with pride of having served, all the while distancing himself from his resentment by referring to himself in the third person. In all the stories, two major themes collided, and somehow harmonized.

First, disillusionment — at realizing that war is mostly spent waiting for something to happen and that your chance for decisive, meaningful action may never come; that not a single person in your chain of command chose to inform you that you had six months to recover from childbirth and be with your baby before you had to deploy; that the educational benefits are not all they’ve been touted to be; and perhaps most profoundly, that you were not always the best that you could be, that you failed, too, that you were only human.

Second, hope — that despite everything, it was all for the best; that the personal growth and the service to nation were worth the sacrifices.

As the audience rose to leave, I overheard enthusiastic approval: “Great show! Fabulous!” Such judgments, though positive, made my skin crawl. It wasn’t a performance. These were not actors. They were people baring their souls, exposing some of the most terrifying and meaningful moments of their lives for all present to try to understand and share — or to tear apart. For a few minutes, I felt the way I did in the weeks and months following deployments: alien, isolated, apart from and resentful of all these civilians who had no clue what it was like, who blithely asked if I had killed anyone, or whether I had that P.T.S.D. thing now.

Then I reconsidered: surely, the audience was commending the quality of the writing, not the show. And here I agreed; the writing was powerful. For about an hour, it sent me back on active duty. I was a part of something greater than myself. I was marching in step. I was in an Iraqi desert. I was tasting the disappointment of betrayal and the wrecking loneliness of feeling forever changed. Later, I hugged my two-year-old son extra hard, extra long, as if I had been gone for months rather than a couple of hours. As Jeremy said, “once you go to Iraq, you don’t go back.”

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At War is a reported blog from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and other conflicts in the post-9/11 era. The New York Times's award-winning team provides insight — and answers questions — about combatants on the faultlines, and civilians caught in the middle.

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